Performer Meow Meow loves life and does not want theater to die.
“I want people to keep coming back and have the spontaneity within theater that is that genuine flexibility of emotion,” she said.
Such is the passion of Meow Meow. In the wake of the pandemic and related theater closings, she would rescue live theater by her teeth and nails if she had to, in epic, wrenching chanson.
Someone like David Byrne, perhaps, would direct and choreograph that performance. (David Bowie, Mikael Baryshnikov and Broadway already have created shows for her.)
Also known as Melissa Madden Gray, Meow Meow said she has worked worked a lot with Jerry Bischoff, so that’s a start. But “American Utopia” style would be too. . .postmodern, maybe, too much of a demand for us to fill it up with our imaginations. Meow Meow does not like to manipulate her audience. No, she would likely inspire a palette of rudimentary passions, primary colors and a blowsier style, exposed and vulnerable.
“I don’t remember my origin story,” Meow Meow said, coyly, adding, “(The reason) I live in this heightened way is so people project on (me) more, and I like that rather than limiting myself to a uniform that’s still a costume.
Both her physical and musical expressions are unfiltered, except by their grace. “I haven’t constructed my identity. I just simply exist like this. I haven’t sat with a notebook and thought about things. If it happens (in a show), it’s evolved from the incongruity of a situation and the joyfulness of it.
“I think just about being real and in-the-moment and sharing in the ridiculousness of, you know, all of us really. I do like to play with the conventions of the concert, but not with a point of destroying it.”
Meow Meow confesses to being a creature of dance. “I think I’ve learned everything through it,” she said. “Music is the thing that makes me move, makes me express.” She spoke of a personal hero, Pina Bausch, a dance theater choreography legend about whom Wim Wenders made an acclaimed documentary.
It’s her music she’s bringing to center stage at her Fox Tucson Theatre concert at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 29. There will be no flying trapezes, looming ladders or elaborate props, although she did promise at least to lift one knee. The music will be from her new album release, “Hotel Amour.”
Pink Martini bandleader Thomas Lauderdale accompanies her on the recording and on tour, along with other musicians from the extended Pink Martini family.
“Why I like this little tour of concerts is they’re fantastic musicians,” Meow Meow said, “and that means the set list can change, but it’s structured. It’s not chaos but it’s alive. With me it’s still theatrical. It’s always some kind of subversion of expectations.”
Concert formats also have the benefit of being more affordable to venues, everywhere, creeping back up to their feet. And they create wide open spaces for creativity, including comedy, audience interactions and smaller-scale hijinks. With Meow Meow there’s always a lot going on.
For years, Meow Meow has toured constantly all over the world. Unaccustomed to spending so much time in her Melbourne home, (“I’d never been in Australia for so long,” she said.) During the pandemic, she poured her creativity into to new music and “Hotel Amour,” her ticket to getting back on tour.
For inspiration she returned to her creative happy place, the crowd-pleasing music, mocking and occasional mayhem of the cabaret traditions at the core of her aesthetic.
“There were the Dada cabarets in the twenties or the really, the 1800s,” she said. “You’ve got a poet, you’ve got someone throwing things, you’ve got people yelling. You’ll have exaggerated personalities, songs from the street, songs ridiculing politicians, someone sitting in the corner.
“I’ve been lucky because I’m able to take that experience of the intimate (cabaret) setting into a concert hall. And I think if you can tell a story, you have activated the whole space. There’s definitely a tradition that I love, which is where social mores and politics are all bashing against each other and with music. It’s that period in the twenties that is so interesting when jazz hits Europe.”
Meow Meow has updated the tradition by gutting it of Dadaist anger while amping up the sharp wit and occasional absurdity of its diversions.
“Even though I live in a very heightened way, visually, on and off stage, it’s very truthful way of being, “Meow Meow said. “I really do believe there’s an honesty within all the theatricality that is very important to me. And I think, in that bigger space that you can make, through comedy, a largeness of life, rather than larger than life, because life is enormous. Grief, it is enormous. Tragedy is enormous.
“When comedy works and you’re sick with laughter, it’s enormous.”
Other Shows This Week
Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress Street. 7 p.m. Saturday, March 25, hotelcongress.com, $15. The more-fabulous-than-life “Retro Game Show,” now in its 11th year, presents “Family Fuss.”
Laff’s Comedy Caffe, 2900 E. Broadway Boulevard, 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Friday, March 24, and 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Saturday, March 25, laffstucson.com, $15, $20 preferred seating, Nick Hoff.
Tucson Improv Movement/TIM Comedy Theatre, 414 E. Ninth Street, tucsonimprov.com, $7 each show, $10 for both shows, same night, free jam and open mic. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 23, “Cage Match;” 8:30 p.m., Open Mic; 6:30 p.m. Friday, March 24, Improv Jam; 7:30 p.m. “The Soapbox;” 9 p.m. Headliner Standup (new); 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 25, “Set Unlisted” (new); 9 p.m. “Improv Madness.”
Unscrewed Theater, 4500 E. Speedway Boulevard, unscrewedtheatre.org, $8, live or remote, $5 kids. 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 24, Family-Friendly Improv; 7:30 p.m., Saturday, March 25, “An Awesome ’80s Improv Show” (Family-Friendly Improv); 9 p.m., Uncensored Improv Comedy with Not Burnt Out Just Unscrewed (NBOJU) and The Big Daddies.
